Friday Puzzler: Sexual Assault and the US Military

Over the last six months we’ve read lots of news stories about sexual assault of female soldiers in the US military. We’ve read about the number of reported sexual assaults, the military brass’tolerance of abuse, and its possible causes. The media has also published lots of suggestions for how to reduce oreliminate the abuse. Few of the articles published over the last six months, however, has addressed or answered the central puzzle associated with this abuse. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the sexual abuse of female soldiers is worse in the US than in other militaries that include women. Why is the sexual abuse of female soldiers more prevalent in the US than in other Western militaries with female soldiers?

(Some countries, not yet including the US, allow women to serve in combat roles. These include New Zealand, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Israel, Serbia, Sweden, Switzerland and Taiwan.)

So today’s puzzler includes a two-part question: How does sexual abuse of female soldiers in the US compare to the sexual abuse of female soldiers in other Western armies? And if it is higher, why has the US military done such a poor job preventing this abuse?

[…] I present them as “puzzlers” because they truly are puzzling to me. This is true of last week’s puzzler. I honestly don’t know whether sexual abuse of women in the U.S. military is worse than in […]

ABOUT US

Barbara F. Walter is a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego. Erica Chenoweth is a political scientist at the University of Denver. Will H. Moore is a political scientist at Arizona State University. Joe Young is a political scientist at American University. Together, they edit this blog to provide simple, straight-forward analysis of political violence around the world.